In colonial Manila, the india was the Spanish classification for an indigenous Filipino woman, a designation that placed her within the social hierarchy that structured daily life in the capital. The dress and bearing of women in nineteenth-century Manila reflected distinctions of class, ethnicity, and social position under colonial rule.
José Honorato Lozano documented this figure as part of his watercolor illustrations of Philippine social life, a body of work produced in the mid-nineteenth century that parallels the Tipos del País tradition in its attention to costume, occupation, and social type. The India de Manila depicts an indigenous Filipino woman of the capital in characteristic dress, capturing the clothing and bearing that marked her place in colonial society. Lozano worked primarily in Manila and produced illustrations that served as visual records of Philippine society for both local and foreign audiences. His work is considered among the most detailed and culturally specific visual documentation of the Philippines in the Spanish colonial period.
This print preserves a record of Filipino womanhood in the colonial capital during the nineteenth century.
Available as a fine art print
→ View print here
